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Comma Chameleon
June 29, 2011 - 2:13pm
Oxford Comma Dropped By University of Oxford
Quote:
A University of Oxford Writing and Style Guide has decidedthat writers should, “as a general rule,” avoid using the Oxford comma. Will you miss the good old fashioned serial comma?
Here’s an explanation from the style guide: “As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’. But when a comma would assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity, it can be used – especially where one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’ [for example]: They had a choice between croissants, bacon and eggs, and muesli.”
*sniff*
On the (perhaps too-simple) theory that commas correspond to slight pauses in speech when reading aloud, I'm going to continue using the Oxford comma. Maybe we can call it "comma classic"?
Vampire Weekend - Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?I was thinking: what are the implications of this move for the twins, Ronnie and Chad. Also, what are the implications for the twins, Ronnie, and Chad?
Move along; nothing to see here, folks. As the "Update" to the link in the OP says,
This is NOT a style guide for students, or for authors submitting books or papers for publication. It's for people writing pamphlets, brochures, and ad copy.
Have they no shame, class, and tradition.
LINK
ETA: vote in the Globe poll: the Oxford comma has a whopping 65% support among readers.
Underestimate the Oxford Comma at your peril
The Oxford comma is necessary to convey proper meaning. Take the following two examples:
a) Tom, Dick, and Harry went to the fair.
b) Tom, Dick and Harry went to the fair.
Example b actually shifts the verb tense from the third person to the second person. In example a, each of Tom, Dick, and Harry went to the fair. In example b, the writer is informing Tom that Dick and Harry went to the fair, the implication being that Tom did not go to the fair. The reader should not be forced to ascertain from other sentences that may be in the same paragraph that the sentence is supposed to be in the third person, when it was written in the second person.
There is no fucking way I will stop using the so-called serial comma.
I hope that's clear,
What is life without a surfeit of commas?
You can bend me shape me any way you want me long as you love me it's all right bend me shape me anyway you want me you got the power to turn on the light.
I hope that's, clear.
from the author's foreword to a book:
I would like to thank my parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope ...
From my childhood memories:
"Let's eat children!"
Punctuate (never forgetting that babble is a feminist board):
A woman without her man is nothing.
or
Willie Nelson opened the country festival with a tribute to his 2 ex-wives, Kris Kristoffersen and Merle Haggard
Ridiculous. This isn't the fifties, when commas were plentiful and abundant. In these trying times, we must be miserly with our commas, and as such, language has progressed to the point where superfluous ticks are no longer necessary. In the second example above, the comma can easily be replaced with a colon (which English-speaking nations have in surplus since the end of the cold war) or an em-dash:
Moreover: in this age of the internet—we can dispense with both of these punctuation marks by employing capital letters and spaces more creatively:
Of course: we don't need commascolonsorcapitals if we just take our grammar cues from Twitter—asweallshould.
Which, finally, passes the test for concision, clarity and liveliness.
Will this be on the exam?
The exam started three threads ago.
@Catchfire -- What works on Twitter, Facebook, and forums such as babble, doesn't work very well in formal prose; which there needs to be space for in our 21st century culture. Hint: Twitterspeak and university level essays don't go together.
Apparently, neither does satire
You heard of the fellow who lapsed into a comma after a botched colonoscopy?
Fanfare for the Comma Man
Sounds to me like reasonable accommadation.